Saturday, 28 December 2013

Salad Leaves in a Perennial Polyculture

I've
been growing a number of plants alongside my runner beans this year as the beginnings of my intended perennial vegetable garden.

The star attraction was a perennial salad plant - siberian purslane. The theory is that this is
easily grown from seed, enjoys a shady spot with any type of soil and tastes nice and mild, so
can make up a bulk salad ingredient. Year round. It is also said to
make good ground cover and so should be very useful as a weed
suppressant. I was understandably very excited to give this one a go. I
ordered my seeds and once they arrived, eagerly skipped off down the
garden to gently scatter them in their spot - two neat rows of seed sown
between my rows of runner beans. And then I waited and waited. And
waited a bit more.

Eventually a few plants poked their little heads up.
Well I'm happy if I get just a few - they're said to self seed readily,
so they should spread around in time. I carefully nurtured these little plants, regularly clearing away any weeds, giving them a grass clipping mulch from time to time.

I waited until summer, when they were a good
size before trying my first taste. What a wonder to have my first
perennial, year round bulk salad plant! I was starting to feel rather chuffed with myself. Perhaps this plant alone marked the point where I'd made it as a permaculture gardener. If my garden grows nothing else, from now on, I can always have salad. Polyculture, weed supressing salad. Multifunctional salad no less.

It tasted vile.

Bummer.

The marigolds looked great though in amongst this disappointing polyculture. They'd self seeded in along with some lovely chamomile plants and some red orache. I got salad leaves from that at least, even if its season isn't all that long. And wild orache also turned up. So annual plants made a good appearance and cheered up the whole bed rather nicely.

And then I read that siberian purslane is a good salad plant all year round, except in summer, when it tastes rather bitter. Aha! Thank goodness for that! I must get back out there and try it again actually. I've not had the guts to do it again since that fateful day. So perhaps this really is the beginnings of my first perennial polyculture, with a few edible annuals thrown in for good measure.

LinkWithin

Search This Blog

Permaculture from Scratch

Oak House is in Shropshire near the Welsh borders. We're converting what began as an old concrete covered farmyard into a permaculture-inspired garden. This blog follows our progress, experiments, research and thoughts as we create a forest garden, organic vegetable garden and begin to live a bit of the good life.

Nancy Lowe Natural Gardens

NEW! I am now offering garden mentoring sessions, both in general garden care and in growing vegetables, using organic and regenerative techniques. I also offer garden design services and can provide you with hand drafted planting schemes or full garden designs, depending on your requirements. Nancy Lowe Natural Gardens

Permaculture LAND Centre

The Permaculture Association UK has set up a network of permaculture demonstration sites across the country - the LAND Network - so that people can find out more about how permaculture is put into practice. Oak House Permaculture Project is proud to be registered as a LAND Learner (a trainee demonstration site) We are hoping to be upgraded to a full LAND Centre very soon.